Product Description: In the weeks before the events in Star Wars: A New Hope, as the Death Star is readied for its fateful first mission, a power-hungry cabal of Grand Mofs and Imperial Officers embark on a dangerous plan to kill Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader and seize control of the Empire! When word that a "Jedi" has made an appearance on a backwater world lures Vader away from his master, the cabal makes its move. But even the galaxy isn't enough of a prize to sate the ambitions of some of the conspirators, and before long the would-be assassins are turning on one another. Their plans are further complicated by the actions of bounty hunter Boba Fett. And, of course, they may have fatally underestimated the cunning of their primary target: Emperor Palpatine! This is the first in a new line of graphic novels set during the early days of the Rebellion, when the Empire controlled the galaxy!
Good book. My Husband actually likes these books and he is 40. He is a big fan of Star Wars (not to the point of collecting SW items) and likes to read most of the spin offs. He said that these books are written pretty good.
THIS is Vader??? There is, give or take a year or two, about two decades spanning the time between the end of "The Revenge of the Sith" and the start of "A New Hope." Apparently, very little occurred during that period. We already know the mighty Death Star, which was nearly complete at the end of "Sith," wasn't put into use for 20 years. Now, it appears that the Emperor waited just as long to start training Darth Vader in the ways of the Dark Side of the Force.
"Betrayal" is supposed to occur just a few weeks before "A New Hope" begins. And yet Vader is still insecure in his power, fearful of leaving the Emperor's side, hardly the figure to inspire fear throughout the galaxy. This story would have worked much better 15 or more years earlier in the Star Wars continuity.
The story itself revolves around a plot to assassinate the Emperor and Vader. The Emperor's devotion to the Sith religion, some underlings worry, will lead them all into defeat. The plot, obviously borrowed from a similar attempt by some German leaders during Hitler's reign, could have been good, but the book doesn't give itself time to involve the readers in anything more than the barest threads. We never get to know much about these rebellious leaders, who mostly squabble among themselves and assassinate each other rather than take action against their targets. Their plan, such as it is, is flimsy. It's execution, weak.
And Vader better pull himself together and inspire a little fear soon, or the Rebels are going to laugh him right off the Death Star.
by Tom Knapp, Rambles.(n e t) editor
A nice break I found this graphic novel to be a change from standard Empire vs. Rebels. Instead it's Empire vs. Empire, which get's very interesting. Speaking of interesting, Trachta's (Grand Moff Trachta, the leader of the attempted coup) plot to overthrow the Sith was very. An unusaul thing for a Grand Moff to be doing, but anyway. The new characters were excellently done (Trachta, Kadir, Gauer). Very good art by Ryan Benjamin improved the rating to 4 stars. The only minus to Betrayal was the shortness. Could have been a lot longer (and a lot better). A good read.
The secret plot to assinate Hilter...er, I mean Vader. This comic story takes place a few week before the beginning of Ep. IV A New Hope, when a few Imperial officers, including a couple Grand Moffs, plot to assinate both Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine in an attempt to save te Empire from their power hungery drive to control the galaxy. Remind you of anything? Sure does me. This reminds me of the plot to kill Hilter to save the Third Reich from destruction from within.
Anyway, like other reviews have said here, the story is a bit short and conceeded. Dialogue is a bit cheesey if not adolescent. In other words, you can't picture James Earl Jones saying some of Vader's dialogue in this book.
The art is above average I guess. Better than what was in Tales of the Jedi, but not as good as what's in the Clone Wars series. Probably on par with the Crimson Empire series.
Too short but well-written; this is a good story arc. While the artistic depictions of some characters may be a bit dodgy, this first story arc of the Empire comic was well "storyboarded" and well-written. Vader fighting cloned stormtroopers on Coruscant. What can I say? This was a good way to grab the reader's attention right at the start. One weakness of Betrayal is that we don't get much story surrounding new characters such as Trachta and Gauer; also, things move rather quickly at one point, and the comic probably could have been better if the progress of the conspiracy had been fleshed out for two more issues. The design of Trachta is nice because it shows another example of Imperial use of cyborging via a breathing apparatus. I would like to see some of the new characters from this story arc in later material. It should be mentioned here that the plot of some Imperial generals trying to assassinate Vader is ultimately derived from the incident with Hitler's generals, and it's already been used in the Marvel comic series. In fact, both versions ( Marvel and Dark Horse ) involve an airlock, but the scenes are played differently. The drama of the Marvel scene is all about the generals thinking Vader's been blown out into space, and then Vader's hand appears on the edge of the airlock and he hauls himself back into the ship. In Betrayal's version we get to see Vader "flying" around in the breached airlock with lightsaber on, slicing through huge chunks of metallic debris.
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